Why do they give a damn if people are subscribing in the US and using their product in Africa?
If anything they should be using their position to obliterate the whole idea of region-locking anything.
If anything they should be using their position to obliterate the whole idea of region-locking anything.
Or local businesses as they are sometimes known
But there is a good point and pattern to notice here, that further consolidation into a global companies providing internet access put resources and power into even fewer hands, but now that power is no longer being held by potentially authoritarian politicians and their Gestapo.
The solution for that means requiring multiple satellite internet providers, and people paying attention always to prevent a critical mass or majority of them from capture by bad actors - which we know happened with MSM consolidation, as well as more recently with social media platforms all illegally colluding with the US government - exposed due to Elon buying Twitter-X and releasing the Twitter Files.
But what point were you trying to make? That Starlink is bad for local economies because people are paying a non-local company?
It's certainly a good way to suppress local infrastructure development, yes
Musk once said that, in that case, the country's leaders could "shake their fists impotently at the sky". Which is imho the right answer.
It's not difficult for a state level entity to create problems for his businesses.
Everywhere else it makes much more sense to get permission to operate (vs. trying some pirate operation where Starlink is treated like a contraband that needs to be illegally imported into the country, the payments must happen stealthily, you get no support etc.).
Space as a shared resource (as opposed to e.g. airspace) only works if countries (and corporations) respect each others sovereignty.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I'm probably missing your point. Can you clarify?
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pentagon-official-warns-r...
Shoot down every one that passes over country X? Hope you've got a few thousand antisatellite weapons, and you're willing to burn them on this...
Also, the countries most likely to do something this stupid are the ones the US government is giving him permission to defy, particularly Iran or Russia. If something happens, it will be more on the US government than SpaceX.
There's not only Starlink in LEO. Some of the existing constellations there are safety-of-life relevant (e.g. Iridium for polar flights or shipping routes), and Iridium doesn't have a stockpile of spares sitting on launchpads for an "Elon poked the bear one too many times" scenario.
So it does seem like some debris making it into higher and lower orbital shells is quite likely.
Iridium is only useful in safety-of-life because it's too expensive for anything else. If SpaceX were that bad at creating a market for satellites no one would be trying to shoot their satellites down.
On the other hand, I also think that some *ground* safety systems will rely on satellite data links as a back-up, as well.
Why would it be one satellite? Many countries consider LEO sovereign airspace. And there would be international cover from countries like China and Russia.
If potting sats becomes normalised it ceases to be something that can be privately financed.
Do you have a source for this?
Inmarsat is the only exception for phones.
A government gets to decide what their citizens can have.
Think about it the other way around.
Let's say there is a brand new vehicle for sale in China with no airbags, no abs, no emissions controls of any kind, etc.
People in the US are absolutely NOT allowed to purchase that because the government of the US have decided it goes against the public interest (safety, pollution, etc.).
Just because one country thinks people should be able to conceal carry handguns, that doesn't mean other countries have to allow it.
Do Africans deserve less enforcement of things their government has not approved than people in other parts of the world?
Would you be OK if some country started making high-current electrical devices that were not approved and then just forcefully sold them in your country, even though regulations prohibited it?
It's not about what they "deserve". It is about what is physically possible.
I would love it if pirate internet via satellite that cannot be controlled by any government became a common thing in the US (and everywhere in the world). Unfortunately the US does have the enforcement capability to tell starlink what to do.
What are you talking about?
They can make the possession of satellite equipment a crime (already is in quite a few countries), They can fine Starlink for allowing service when it has not been approved, they can ban starlink in the future.
They can take many approaches.
But also, from a business point of view, maximum profit might mean offering a $100 a month service for residential users, a $1000 a month service for billionaires' yachts, a $5000 a month service for private jets, and a $100,000 a month service for defence industry applications.
Charging more for use away from home, based on GPS data, could be very profitable. Especially as you need GPS tracking to beam the signals to the right place anyway.